Do You Know How Long Will Working from Home Continue?
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Are you still working from home? Does your employer feel that the Pandemic will be here to stay for the next few years? If that’s yes, it’s legit to ask questions like — how long will working from home continue?
Remember the day when the world went crazy on a novel Coronavirus that was spreading around the world like a wildfire?
According to the records, COVID-19 was first reported on December 12, 2019, in Wuhan, China. Later World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Since the last pandemic was seen 100 years ago so people were not ready for a new Pandemic. Overnight people’s lives changed. Companies have to close their offices and ask employees to work from home until further notice.
But to my surprise, I’ve seen most of the employers living in countries(my part of the world) like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have already given up the thought of working from home. They are asking workers to return to the office since September 2021.
But life is not the same for everyone around the globe. Many companies in the U.S and Europe are thinking about keeping work from home until the Pandemic ends.
About half of workers who are working from home all or most of the time and whose offices are closed say they would be comfortable going into their workplace if it were to reopen in the next month.
This creates great confusion among workers — when the work from home will end?
So before we dive into the topic let’s see what is Work from home, the pros and cons, a few statistics, and many more.
Table of Contents
· What does Work From Home Mean?
· Which Companies are Allowing Work From Home?
· Pros and Cons of Work From Home
· Surprising Work From Home Statistics 2020
· Interesting Facts About the Work From Home Statistics 2021?
· Can Working from Home be the New Normal?
· Work From Home and Increased Awareness of Cost-Saving Opportunities
· What if Employees Feel Unsafe Coming to Work for Fear of Infection?
· Why Demand is Increasing for Work from home Employees?
· Are Employees Seeing Advantages to Remote Work?
· Top Reasons Why Work From Home will Stay:
∘ 1) Commute Time, Wellbeing and Flexibility
∘ 2) Increased Popularity
· Wrapping Up
What does Work From Home Mean?
Work from home or “WFH” is working on a job remotely using different digital tools for communication, project management, time management, etc.
Before the global Coronavirus Pandemic, WFH was not as popular as it is now. Since all the work is done using a computer or a mobile device virtually, it is also known as virtual work.
Which Companies are Allowing Work From Home?
Forbes listed tech companies that still allow people to stay at home. Some notable companies are:
- Github
- Wikimedia Foundation
- DreamView Inc
Pros and Cons of Work From Home
A plethora of studies was conducted to understand the advantages of working from home. According to the study conducted by Christine Ipsen, Marc van Veldhoven, Kathrin Kirchner, and John Paulin Hansen, there are three main advantages of working from home remotely.
These are:
- Work–life balance
- Improved work efficiency
- Greater work control
On the contrary, the study also found 3 main disadvantages of Work From Home.
- Home office constraints
- Work uncertainties
- Inadequate tools
Although the above studies don’t conclude whether such advantages or disadvantages will increase the chance of keeping work from home policies active until the end of 2022 or even the mid-2023, we will surely find some interesting facts about WFH in the following sections.
Surprising Work From Home Statistics 2020
A survey conducted by PwC in 2020 found that 73% of executives in the U.S working from home believe it was a success for their company. And 72% of them want to work at least 2 days a week under some form of remote work.
While Pew Research Center published a report where they claimed that Pre-Covid work from home workers in 2020 was 20% compared to the current 71%.
Interesting Facts About the Work From Home Statistics 2021?
Surprisingly, working from home stats skyrocketed in 2021 with 159% growth in virtual jobs in just 12 years. In 2021, around 16% of remote workers were managers and the rest of the employees were sales executives and operations employees.
Also, 52% of men and 60% of women already declared in 2021 that they will quit their jobs if they are not allowed to work from home in the years ahead. The happy index of workers working from home also increased by 22% in just one year after the Pandemic started, Owl Labs reported.
Can Working from Home be the New Normal?
Top companies in the U.S declared a long-term work from the home package for their employees. For instance, Facebook is thinking about transferring 50% of its workforce out of the office within 2030.
However, some recent news shows that Google will be asking their employees in Bay Area to start office from April this year. Guess what! Google will be asking workers to work 3 days a week physically and the rest in a home office.
As the Covid-19 cases are dropping since this year, many companies are already rethinking their commitments to remote work.
Flexjobs, on the other hand, surveyed whether working from home will be a new normal for employees or not and got a positive response from the respondents. FlexJobs is now claiming that millions of workers around the world will adopt the new normal life in the future whether the pandemic will stay or not.
Work From Home and Increased Awareness of Cost-Saving Opportunities
Working from home during the Covid Pandemic not only saved money for the employee of the companies but also significantly reduced the rental costs of most American companies.
And USA Today claimed in a report that such savings opportunities will here to stay until businesses and employees accept the fact — work from home is not working anymore. The report also added remote workers save up to $4,000 per year citing the study conducted by FlexJobs.
“We joke that the uniform at our company is yoga pants and jeans.” — Sara Sutton, CEO of FlexJobs.
But do you think the cost savings for employees will only happen in commute costs? Actually, no! Employees can save money on laundry, coffee, lunch, snacks, etc.
At the same time, the employer saves additional costs like furniture repairs, employee food costs, snacks, meeting costs, etc.
What if Employees Feel Unsafe Coming to Work for Fear of Infection?
If employees feel unsafe due to the fear of infection then working from home will stay for at least this year. Already US companies are facing great resignations with 44% of American employees looking for a new job.
This will stop employers and companies to force their workers from returning to the office if the workers or employees don’t feel comfortable. According to recent study reports, the two-year-long pandemic already impacted the mental health of the working force in the US.
So there’s no chance that an employee feeling unsafe about coming to work due to an infection will listen to the employer's call of joining physical offices again.
Why Demand is Increasing for Work from home Employees?
In my opinion, although there are many advantages of WFH(discussed in the previous sections) the demand for work from home employees is increasing for two reasons:
- Considerable improvement in Communications and Technology
- A comfortable life
Moreover, you don’t have to commute every day. Just wake up a few minutes before your work, have breakfast and you are good to go. The online meeting apps are optimized enough to feel like you are with your colleagues.
As a result, Stanford researchers found that the American economy is now a work from home economy where 42% of the U.S labor force is working full time from home.
The researchers also found other important issues like 60% of American economic activities now rely on work from home laborers. This is a significant increase in number and the growth is justified by the increase in the interest in working from home.
Are Employees Seeing Advantages to Remote Work?
A study conducted by Flexjobs showed that employees are getting more productive in remote jobs than in offices. On average, workers are saving 52 minutes in a working day. They are using the additional time for being more productive at work.
Moreover, many employees are reporting better energy management when they are cutting off commutes during a workday. Both employee and company performance has seen a significant increase in many cases. So they can focus on what matters most for their organization
Top Reasons Why Work From Home will Stay:
1) Commute Time, Wellbeing and Flexibility
Indeed listed a few reasons for which we think Work From Home will stay for a long time.
- Employees get less distracted in remote work.
- Saves commute times.
- Time optimization
- Having a comfort zone means being creative
- Decreased environmental impacts
2) Increased Popularity
The rising popularity of remote work will help employees and workers to capitalize on the positive aspects of remote work and stay home for work.
If you ask me both employees and employers will agree to keep many positions in the US remote until the end of 2023. And the top tech giants will also follow this formula to optimize their business and employee health.
Wrapping Up
The question of how long will working from home continue is not something you can answer with one single study. You need to follow the regular work from home trends, the advantages people are talking about in different remote communities and discuss the matter with your own employer.
Just in case, your employer is keen to stop working from home tomorrow and you are not finding confidence always look back to this article to find key statistics on the work from home trends.
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